In a continuing effort to improve the quality of shipping fruits, we, the inventors, typically hybridize a large number of peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, and cherry seedlings each year. We also grow a lesser number of open pollinated seeds of each of these fruits. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of plum tree, which has been denominated varietally as ‘PLUMSWEET XIX’.
During a typical blooming season we isolate as seed parents both individual and groups of different plum and interspecific hybrid trees by covering them with screen houses. A hive of bees is placed inside each such house, and bouquets to provide pollen from different plum, apricot, and interspecific hybrid trees are placed in buckets near the trees approximately every two days for the duration of the bloom. During 2008 one tree of ‘OC579’ (unpatented) plum was crossed by us in this manner. To pollinate this isolated tree, we selected bouquets from several sources of plum trees without keeping specific written details. Upon reaching maturity the fruit from this plum tree was harvested, and the seeds were removed, cracked, stratified and germinated as a group with the label “H1”. They were grown as seedlings on their own root in our greenhouse and upon reaching dormancy transplanted to a cultivated area of our experimental orchard located near Le Grand, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). During the summer of 2012 the claimed variety was selected by us as a single plant from the group of seedlings described above. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of plum tree, we asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproduction of plant and fruit characteristics were true to the original tree in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of ‘Nemaguard’ (unpatented) rootstock upon which the present variety was compatible and true to type.
The present variety is similar to its seed parent, ‘OC579’ plum (unpatented), by being self-unfruitful and by producing fruit that is firm, juicy, sweet, and medium in size, but is quite distinguished therefrom by producing fruit that is dark red and green in skin color instead of pink and yellow, that is much darker red in flesh color, and that matures about forty days earlier.
The present variety is most similar to ‘Plumsweet XIV’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 23,686) interspecific tree by being self-unfruitful, by blooming in the mid season, and by producing fruit that is sweet and excellent in flavor, primarily a red and green two-tone in skin color, and clingstone in type, but is quite distinguished therefrom by producing fruit that is larger in size, that is moderately asymmetrical in shape, that has dark red dappling on the skin, and that matures about seven days later.